[Hipper]

After advice from Alexander Reynolds I bought and installed various GIK products. This is the outcome in my 13' 8" x 12' 6" x 8' room.



There are a couple more pictures in my gallery as well as views of how it was before with Auralex foam only.

Auralex foam only went down to 125Hz so the main effect of the GIK panels was more bass control, leading to more bass from the music and less from the room - more musical bass in fact.

I also spent a lot of time - some eight months - trying to find the best locations for the speakers and listening chair. I used a free software, REW (Room Equalisation Wizard), and microphone to find the best position. I defined the best position as one where the bass (up to 500Hz) was the smoothest. There turned out to be two locations.

One was 'The Thirds' arrangement, namely speakers and chair one third of the length of the relevant wall into the room. I tried this for a while and it is interesting as it gives a depth to the sound I never had. However the novelty wore off and the anomalies from my Red Book CDs became annoying. I could never get it exactly right for satisfying music.

The second set up was as you see in the picture, namely speakers about as far apart as they can be and chair quite close to the back wall. It's only a 2D image but this is where I found the sound most to my liking. I used an equaliser to fine tune the frequency response through the whole range, as well as adjusting for my sixty year old ears.

A key improvement was moving the equipment to the side wall from in between the speakers. This not only improved the sound but allowed room treatment to be more easily placed on the front wall.

[murphy11]

Congrats! I went through a similar exercise doing hundreds of measurements over the course of a few months and my system has never sounded better. I really wished I would have saved REW plots from before I had treatments and placed  by guessing at the 'best' spot but I did not save original plots. Any chance you saved original plots and final plot?

REW was really helpful in determining placement of panels at reflection points and determining if panels on front wall objectively made things better or worse.

[Hipper]

I only started using REW once I got the panels. Like you I regret I don't have 'before and after' readings. I had it for a year or so before but after getting it set up on a lap top never pushed myself to employ it, partly because of the need to learn yet more stuff but also because I was happy with measurements taken using my Behringer equaliser. I was wrong in thinking that but we live and learn.

The key for me though was not just making measurements with REW and a microphone but recognising they were just a guide for placement and the final decisions on EQ should be made by ears and pink noise test tones. Microphones and ears do not hear the same throughout the frequency response but particularly at the higher end. In particular I found that I needed to boost 6.3 and 8kHz by 4dB to bring it to the same levels as the other frequencies. Above 10kHz I hear nothing.

[jk@home]

Neat setup. I guess those are bass trap panels across the top of the ceiling?

I use an office chair on wheels as a listening chair, and can "adjust" the bass output by rolling it closer or further from the back wall. Even though I may get  more accurate bass when the chair is out a "third" into the room, if I roll it closer to the back, the bass gets punchier. Kinda of like a tone control.

[tull skull]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Hipper. You said when you transitioned away from the previous Cardas room setup (room divided into thirds) that the sound was more how you liked it. Maybe you could describe what you like so others can know if doing something similar might be beneficial?
Good job by the way!

[Hipper]

I guess those are bass trap panels across the top of the ceiling?

Yes, the soffit traps are in the ceiling-wall corners. They were a bit awkward to install but they've stayed up for a year now!!

You said when you transitioned away from the previous Cardas room setup (room divided into thirds) that the sound was more how you liked it. Maybe you could describe what you like so others can know if doing something similar might be beneficial?

In the past I used pretty much the set up I have now and got used to it. I got a 2D soundstage with instruments/voices placed at various points between the speakers depending on the recording. There was no real depth to it.

I used 'The Thirds' concept after reading this:

http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/monitoring.htm

I could see that the thirds and my original locations were about right as the REW measurements were the best in those locations

I understand the theory behind it, namely that the room bass problems are minimised in such an arrangement, and that's what the measurements revealed. I also tried combinations of fifths and sevenths but thirds was best and practical too. It looked odd but sounded interesting. There was depth and at first I liked that novelty. However it became apparent that my recordings, all Red Book CDs of mostly folk/country rock but some classical, produced anomalies. For instance, the most recent issue of Rick Nelson Live at the Troubadour is a pretty good recording by all accounts yet with the thirds set up, Rick's vocals, which are clear, are behind the speakers, with bass and drums a bit behind him, and guitars from the left and right speakers but forward of Rick. That can't be right (it's not as I've seen film of this show with Rick centre front as you'd expect). Either that's a fault of the recording or my set up. I couldn't correct this problem by speaker positioning. In the end the novelty of depth wore off and I was increasingly dissatisfied. That's when I resorted to my previous set up which incidentally produced the best measurements with REW.

It may be that I'm so used to the flat 2D soundstage that my brain won't easily adjust. I'm satisfied if the instruments and voices sound natural and the overall mix is musical. I don't expect a live type soundstage, a concert experience if you like. I'm not convinced it's possible in a small room.

[timind]

Great job there. How bout a pic from the speaker position showing treatment at the other end of the room?

[Glenn Kuras]

Great job. 
Please keep us posted if you have any questions we can help you with.

Glenn
GIK Acoustics